


'They're Using You'

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:37:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5735260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naomi tries to persuade Blair that working with the police isn't a good idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'They're Using You'

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday prompt 'circle'

 

'They're Using You'

by Bluewolf

"Blair, Sweetie, you're doing yourself no good here. Yes, I know you're studying the cops for your dissertation, so in a way I suppose you're using them, but haven't you realized how much they're using you?"

"Naomi, they're not using me."

"Blair, you're too easy-going. Too ready to fall for a sob story. Yes, I know I raised you to think the best of people, raised you to help others whenever you could, but I can't deny that some people are users. They use other people, use their willingness to help. Oh, I grant you cops are sometimes needed - although they usually take things way beyond what's reasonable.  Most of them  are basically jack-booted thugs  using their position  to push  people around - "

"You know, Naomi, that's something I've never understood. You raised me to think the best of people, but you don't think the best of the police. At best you damn them with faint praise. To you, they're worse than people who murder young kids!"

"But they murder too, Sweetie, don't you see? They pretty it up, call it justified, call it maintaining the peace, but when they shoot people? That's just legalized murder."

"And if they shoot someone who's attacking a school, wants to kill as many pupils and teachers as possible, is that murder? It's a last resort, killing one man to save dozens of innocent lives!"

"There are other ways to stop him."

Blair shook his head. "If they shoot to kill, it's because those other ways have been tried and failed. There was one case a while ago - as I remember you were out of the country at the time, somewhere in India, so you wouldn't have seen anything about it. The guy was high on something, went to the day-care establishment where his ex-wife had worked demanding to see her, and when he was told she wasn't there, she'd quit and gone somewhere else, claimed they were lying and gave them half an hour to produce her. He threatened to kill one child every five minutes after that until she came out to see him. But there was no way they could contact her - she'd left Cascade, nobody knew where she'd gone - every child in the place would have been killed, with nothing the staff could do to prevent it. A secretary managed call the police two or three minutes into the half hour; a negotiator was rushed to the place, and the guy told her to stuff her holier-than-thou moralizing and just get his ex-wife.

"What would you have done in that situation, Naomi? An impossible demand, a man who wouldn't listen to reason and the lives of pre-school age children on the line. What would you have done?"

"I... I'd have kept on trying to make him understand that the lives of innocent children weren't a valid bargaining chip."

"He was insane, Naomi. The negotiator tried again and all he did was look at his watch and say 'You've got two minutes to get my wife out here'. At that point the SWAT commander made the decision to take him out. They were hoping for a disabling shot, but he moved just as the sniper fired and the disabling shot became a lethal one."

"And how traumatized were the children, seeing the man killed in front of them?"

"Yes, I admit the kids were traumatized - but they'd have been worse traumatized seeing their friends shot one by one until it was their turn to die. But it's surprising how resilient kids are. When a psychiatrist spoke to them afterwards, it was clear that even the youngest understood that it was him or them."

Naomi looked unconvinced. She sighed. "I don't like seeing you getting so hard, so heartless."

"Naomi, how can it be heartless to say that was better for a deranged man high on drugs to die than two hundred children under five years old?"

"Someone should have been able to stop him."

"The staff had a total of half an hour to try to talk him down. The negotiator, trained in dealing with people like him, had about ten minutes from the earliest they could get her there. There were two minutes left before he started shooting. And the sniper was trying for a disabling shot. Naomi, are you saying you have more sympathy for that man than for the kids and their parents?"

"Why did he want his wife?"

"Good question. When I was eight, why did we run from Eddie Martin, and why did he want us back?"

"Eddie... It... It was time for us to move on."

"He obviously didn't think so. But why was it time for _us_ to move on?"

She hesitated, and Blair went on. "If he had started threatening to kill a lot of children, would you have gone back to see him?"

"I... No. I'd have wanted someone to stop him. If I'd gone back he'd have killed me."

"And if the only way to stop him was to kill him?"

Naomi drew a long, shuddering, sobbing breath. After a long moment, she said, "I hear you. But I still think that the cops you 'work' with are using you, as well as turning you into someone as 'think the worst of people' as they are."

"No," Blair said. "Long before I met Jim I'd already begun to realize that some people don't have a 'best' side - and you know what? Eddie was probably the first one that made me see that. And I saw it surprisingly often after I got my Masters and became a TA. Students who thought the world owed them a living, who'd been so spoiled they expected everything to be handed to them without any effort on their part. Nature or nurture... hard to say, sometimes. Yes, the majority of people are good; but some are bad through and through, Naomi, whatever made them bad. And it was working at Rainier that taught me that, long before I started working with the cops."

***

Although he was usually happy to see his mother, on this occasion Blair breathed a sigh of relief when she left, saying that instead of visiting with him she needed to head off to a retreat to cleanse her karma.

He took a few minutes to sit, half meditating, to cleanse _his_ karma - or, he thought wryly, calm himself down - before heading off to join Jim at the PD.

When he walked into the bullpen, Jim looked up from the report he was reading.

"Chief? I thought you'd be spending the day with Naomi."

"We... had a sort of philosophical disagreement. She's gone off to a retreat somewhere to clear her mind."

"Oh, Sandy, that's a shame. You were looking forward to seeing her," Megan exclaimed.

"Yeah, Hairboy, that's tough. It's been a while since she was here last." Brown moved forward to pat his back.

"At least now you'll be able to join us all for a drink after work," Rafe said.

"A drink?" Blair looked puzzled.

"You put in as much work on the case as any of us," Joel said. "We arrested Andrew Logan this morning." There was a note of satisfaction in his voice.

Logan - a pimp who 'collected' underage runaways, then when they hit legal age quietly - and permanently - disposed of them. For a moment Blair wondered how Naomi would react to that situation. And then he smiled.

"Well done, guys!"

He looked around the bullpen, his smile broadening.

Yes.

All of his life, until he met Jim, he had had acquaintances that he had called 'friends'. Here, he had a real circle of true friends.

And he wouldn't exchange one of them for thirty seconds of Naomi's approval.


End file.
